


a chance of rain

by ttamarrindo



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: M/M, Post-Break Up, magical realism if you choose to believe in it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 18:13:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15442917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ttamarrindo/pseuds/ttamarrindo
Summary: For the first time in a long while, Brian finds him by accident.





	a chance of rain

**Author's Note:**

> I did an exercise on free-writing with the Stop The Rain EP on replay so, something to that effect. My way of saying it's okay not to be okay, sometimes. Thank you for reading and please take care.

For the first time in a long while, Brian finds him by accident. 

Stopping three steps before the awning a block away from his apartment is not a decision he remembers making, and maybe it makes him twice the fool - he can recall, distantly, another night much like this - but Brian pauses for a moment, and a moment is all it takes. 

Jae stands under the corner store awning, hands clutching at the handles of a plastic bag and looking defeatedly upwards. The sky is tainted a coal black, cracked through with lightning-silver and pouring rain. Brian watches Jae hesitate, watches him pull his coat in tighter, and step out to brave the rain. 

Brian’s socks turn wet as he follows after him. There are puddles on the street. The water is stained neon red and blue, like the rain’s bled the color right out of the city lights. Brian forgets to sidestep them as he catches up to Jae, who waits by the crosswalk for a green light that’s taking too long to arrive and shivers under the cold fall of rain. The hem of Brian’s jeans is soaking by the time he reaches him. Brian can’t find it in himself to mind.

The light is still blinking red when the shroud of Brian’s umbrella slides in over Jae’s head like a puzzle piece slotting into place. Brian imagines he can hear it click.

It takes a moment, but once Jae notices the lack of droplets on his skin he looks up, blinking bemused, startled eyes at the unexpected cover, then sweeps his gaze down in askance. 

His lips part in a quiet exhale when they settle on Brian’s hesitant smile, and the words seem to get caught up behind his teeth. The breath that would have carried them out turns to a cloudy white, there where it greets night-cold air. 

“There’s space enough for two,” Brian says, not quite an answer to the question in Jae’s eyes but still better than the too formal ‘hello’ he would have settled for had Jae looked more surprised to see him. As it is though, Jae seems to be more amused than caught off-guard. He shakes his head, like he’s ridding himself of the last grapples of sleep, and finds enough warmth inside himself to offer a gentle smile. 

“Didn’t think it would break down so soon,” he says. On the other side of the street, the light finally turns green. They step over the crosswalk, walking slow and keeping close. Still, the stubborn rain manages to wet their shoulders, drags them down like stones. Brian tucks Jae in closer by the elbow and convinces himself he did so out of necessity more than old, die-hard habit. 

“Jimin insisted it would,” Jae continues. His lips pull downwards. “I didn’t listen.” 

“You never do,” Brian says back, amicably enough not to be chiding. Still, Jae bristles. Brian can hear him grit his teeth. Let out a harsh breath. 

“Are you here to lecture me, too?” He demands. “Because you can save yourself the trouble, Sungjin already gave me the sermon.” 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Brian placates, looking up at the dark clouds, at the one hanging particularly close. He really didn’t mean it like that, but he still winces. Knowing Jae, there’s no chance he could have taken it _any_ other way. “Sorry,” Brian adds, for what it’s worth. 

Jae waves him off, relenting. “It’s whatever. Not like you have to take care of me or anything anymore. Not your fault.” 

Maybe not, Brian thinks, but there’s a pinch in Jae’s forehead that belies his words, if not his sentiment, and it makes Brian feel guilty enough to say, “Let me make it up to you? I have left-over chinese back at my place. And a heater, too.” 

Jae hums. “Nothing to make up for,” he says. Then he sighs, ducking down so Brian can maneuver the umbrella away from the wave of pedestrians hurrying away from the rain. “But I wouldn’t say no to a towel. I also just bought a bottle of soju and it would be very sad to drink it all by myself. Don’t need to give Jimin another reason to get on my ass.” 

“My places it is then,” Brian says, ambling forward and turning down a corner. His apartment comes into view, and he hands the umbrella over to Jae as he keys in the code for the door. He holds the door open and Jae steps inside hesitantly, dragging in the rain. They take the stairs up to Brian’s floor. 

The old ajumma from B-6 is mopping up a growing brown puddle in the hallway. Brian’s been trying to get that leak fixed since last week, and the constant rain of the past few days has only made it worse. 

From her perch near the stairs, the woman squints down at them suspiciously, beady eyes hovering over Jae’s head, and says, “You’re gonna make it worse what with all the water you’re pouring, boy.” 

“Can’t really help it,” Jae answers, still holding the umbrella over his head. Then he adds a tired, well-worn, “Sorry.” 

Brian hurries to fish his keys out of his pocket before she can chide Jae any longer and ushers Jae inside. He forgot to close his window when he left for work that morning, and the storm has spread all over. The whole room looks like ground-zero, and Brian curses when he sees his floor overflowing with paper sheets, most of them crumpled up and dripping wet. 

“You’re a mess, dude,” Jae says from the threshold as Brian hurries to close his window. The wind stops howling when it slides into place, and he hears Jae’s wry laugh clearly when Brian tells him, grinning, “It’s so you can’t make it worse.”

“I thought writers were supposed to be better liars,” Jae answers, setting down the bags and going over to where Brian is crouching next to his desk, shuffling through papers and trying to keep the ink from turning into shapeless stains. It’s really a fruitless effort. You can never keep a storm at bay. Just board up your windows. Hope for the best. 

“Who says I’m not?” Brian bites back. He sighs, grabbing for the bunch the made it out best and dumping the rest in a clump to the side. He’ll deal with it tomorrow, when Jae isn’t dripping water all over. “It doesn’t matter. I keep a digital back-up anyways.”

“That’s new,” Jae hums. “You were always so old-fashioned.” His voice sounds nostalgic, rounded at the edges with forgotten fondness. There’s the drip of water against linoleum floor. “You’ve, um, changed since I last saw you.” 

“It hasn’t been that long.” A year at most. Maybe less. It’s hard to keep track of time when every day feels the same. 

Brian looks up to see Jae standing by the window, outlined by the dim light of the streetlights and the shadow of a cloud, and finds he doesn’t look that different after all. 

Maybe he’s a bit more tired, the laughter lines around his eyes sinking deeper into his skin, but when he smiles and offers the hand that isn’t holding the umbrella up to Brian he looks exactly like he did when they held hands for the first time, when they kissed for the last.

“You promised me chinese,” Jae says when the silence stretches them both too thin, and hauls Brian up to his feet.

“And I keep my promises.” 

Jae laughs, and Brian carries the sound with him all the way over to the kitchen, where he unearths the day-old take-out box from the bottom of his fridge and sets it out on a plate he can microwave. By the time the food is done warming up, it’s stopped raining inside and Jae has finally put the umbrella down. He sits up on the counter by the oven, kicking his feet against it as the rain claps outside. 

“I heard you got a job at some law firm,” Brian starts, handing Jae a fork and hopping up to sit beside him. “Park and Choi? That’s a big deal.” Or so Wonpil said. Brian wouldn’t know. Him and Jae, they haven’t really spoken since they parted ways. 

“Yeah.” Jae sounds pleased, though that could be the dumpling he’s got in his mouth. “I’m kinda stuck as a bottom-feeder right now, but I’ll work my way up soon enough. You know I’m great when it comes to arguing.”

Brian nods. Wonpil had asked him once, after the break up and its oddly quiet aftermath, if that had been the reason behind them parting. He’d know how stubborn Jae could get, how close Brian held some grudges to his chest, and figured it might as well have been that what pushed them over the edge. 

It wasn’t. They had stirred storms inside of teacups when they had been together, drove each other up the walls, but in the end, it had more to do with bad luck than anything one of them might have said.

(“I think I met you at the wrong time,” Jae had told him once, when it wouldn’t stop pouring over his head. Brian can’t say he saw it coming, but then again, there are times when the storm comes with no warning. Times when it doesn’t come at all, and the calm before it it’s not a quietness but simply a waiting for a rainfall that refuses to come.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” he’d said, gestured at the space between them. Just a few inches. An eroded gap. “When I’m like - When I’m like this.”

“That’s okay,” Brian had answered, because that had seemed to be all he could say. _You’re okay. We’re okay. We’ll be okay._ Sandbags to hold back an ocean.

Then Jae had left, and Brian had written his words down on a stray napkin, folded it up like he had folded up his hands, and kept it inside his wallet because even if he seems to misplace his heart from time to time he’s always had the good fortune of always knowing where exactly his wallet is.)

Here and now, Brian chuckles, knocking his shoulders against Jae’s and feeling the wet fabric seep water into his own shirt. Jae grins at him, steals a slice of duck meat off Brian’s plate, and says, “What are you up to anyways? Last I heard you were still chained to a desk on a cubicle 6 days a week.”

“I quit,” Brian says. Or, he would like to say, at least. Would like to know how the words would taste on his mouth. But Jae was right, he was always a bad liar, so what he really says is this: 

“Just 5 now.” He shrugs, voice wry. “Got promoted. It’s not exactly fun work but it pays well and the hours are flexible enough that I can write in my spare time.”

“Good for you,” Jae says, and when Brian turns to look, there’s a cloud hanging above Jae’s head, cold and dreary and so very still. “That you’re still writing, I mean. Not the job, your job sucks.”

“Thanks,” Brian answers, dust-dry, because it’s true enough. The rain is cracking against the window panes like hairline fractures. The cloud hanging above Jae’s head stopped raining a while ago, but Brian thinks he can see the remnants of his own storm echoing the one outside. 

“I think I should go,” Jae says, and no later have the words come out he’s hopping down from the counter and grabbing for the coat he discarded over the kitchen table. “It’s getting late. You can, uh, keep the soju.”

“Okay,” Brian says, like he’d said not so long ago, a year at most, when Jae couldn’t stop himself from raining and told him maybe it was better if he went away for a while, to try and keep dry. “I’ll, uh, walk you to the door?”

It’s not meant to come out phrased as a question, but Jae nods anyways, so Brian does. He hovers by the threshold. Jae, too. 

Standing by the door, they’re at an impasse. Brian feels water hit his bare feet and looks up at Jae’s coal-dark cloud, but it’s only the hem of Brian’s own jeans, still wet and dripping on the floor. 

“Thanks for tonight,” Jae says carefully, grateful but not. Brian thinks he understands. They were good together, but they could never figure out how to be alright apart. And that can only work for so long. Today, a year later, Jae’s cloud still hangs heavy over his head and Brian is a one-word writer, faced with a blank page and ocean he can’t navigate.

And Brian wishes, suddenly, for the night to stretch a little longer. It’s futile, he knows, and he can feel the ocean crashing down. But he still wishes he could un-stick all these words from his throat. 

Some of them he has written down, translated feeling to ink, tried to get letters to match feelings. But those words have been overrun by the rain, too. Washed down, washed away.

And Brian, well. He's never been good at letting go. But Jae? He knows how to run with the tide, knows when to stop before the current grows too strong and pulls them both under.

“Hey,” Jae says. He’s smiling, just a little, like a silver lining showing through. “I’ll see you when it stops raining, okay?”

“Okay,” Brian says, because that’s all he knows how to do. But he thinks, it’s been pouring for a while now, and even the rain has to come to an end. Someday. So he adds, “I’ll, uh, keep an eye on the weather forecast.”

And Jae laughs, cloud rolling steadily overhead, and the sound carries on for a long time after he’s gone.

**Author's Note:**

> When I'm not dropping off the face of the earth you can always find me at [Tumblr](https://jahehyung.tumblr.com) / [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ttamarrindo) / [CC](https://curiouscat.me/ttamarrindo).


End file.
